The invention relates to a device for filling nutrient materials, in particular liquid food products which include solid, chunky pieces and a suitable dosing arrangement therefore. Such device includes a housing with a material inlet, a mouthpiece as well as a dosing element which includes an inlet and outlet valve that is independently adjustable as well as a return sucking device.
Dosing arrangements for feeding products at a right angle to the dosing arrangement are already known in the state of the art. In such a known arrangement the dosing element is mounted laterally above the outlet end of the mouthpiece. There is mounted in a plane above the dosing element vertically above the mouthpiece a return sucking piston of the return sucking arrangement.
By a corresponding adjustment of the return sucking piston there is assured that at the outlet end of the mouthpiece a postdripping of the product is prevented, because otherwise problems with respect to the soiling of the machine and eventually problems with the sealing of the container which is to receive the nutrient material cannot be avoided. It has now been demonstrated that such dosing arrangements with return sucking of the above-described type work generally quite well as long as they are used for a pasty type of nutrient material, for example materials which contain mayonnaise.
However, when such a machine is used for filling products which contain different solid, respectively chunky constituents, such as for example onions, sauerkraut, paprika, etc. within a large quantity of liquid, such as for example sauce, gravy, broth or the like, it has been demonstrated that such salad-like filling products can no longer operate with the known dosing arrangement without any post-dripping occurring. This can be particularly attributed to the fact that the return sucking piston is relatively far removed from the outlet end of the mouthpiece, so that the sucking force is no longer effective to prevent the post-dripping of the product. In addition to this drawback, it has been noted that in this type of dosing arrangement a relatively large quantity of liquid collects between the dosing element and the mouthpiece, so that consideration has to be given as to how one could better prevent the post-dripping of such a device.
In practice there are already known dosing arrangements wherein the outlet end of the mouthpiece is provided with membrane-like sealing elements. These arrangements generally operate satisfactorily with respect to the post-dripping problem. However, by operating with products of the afore-described type it is not always possible to avoid a clogging by the solid constituents in the opening of the sealing membrane and thereby prevent an effective sealing, respectively drip-free closing of the closing membrane.